Emmylou Cages Songbird

Posted by amyclark on 08/17/2008
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9/18/2007
Stephen L. Betts
“If you live by the charts, you die by the charts,” says Emmylou Harris in a recent Los Angeles Times
feature about the legendary songbird. Not coincidentally, much of the
interview covers Emmylou’s thoughts on today’s (9/18) release of the
four-CD, 78-track box set Songbird: Rare Tracks & Forgotten Gems, which also includes a DVD.

The Alabama-born Emmylou was a single mother with a baby in the early '70s, and was playing four sets a night in Washington, D.C.,
clubs when Chris Hillman told Gram Parsons, his former Byrds and Flying
Burrito Brothers bandmate, that she might be the girl singer he was
seeking for his hard-country solo project.

“It was very quick,” Emmylou says of their collaboration. “We did [his 1972 album] GP … We did the tour … We recorded Grievous Angel …  and he was gone.” [Gram Parsons died of a drug overdose in September 1973.]
“One day, I
really heard the genius of his voice, the beauty - -and all that music
opened up to me. “Angels Rejoiced” just did it … I was gone, so
converted.” Their last conversation was about that song, which appears
for the first time on Songbird.

Go to Los Angeles Times to read the entire story, written by acclaimed music journalist Holly Gleason.